1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic documents. More specifically, the present invention provides a method, system, and computer program product for dynamic field-level access control in shared documents.
2. Background Art
Many work environments require collaborative writing and editing of shared documents, drawings, presentations, spreadsheets, Web pages, workflows, etc. A good example is a scientific paper, in which researchers need to jointly develop and refine a document. Technology, such as the Internet, has simplified such collaboration, whether the participants are co-located or in different geographic locations, and has changed the way many people work. By giving an almost instantaneous access to information distributed all over the world, the Web lets people who have never met collaborate together.
Collaborative writing/editing is a complex task which can vary along several parameters. Apart from inherent difficulties associated with the writing task itself, collaborative writing/editing introduces all those problems commonly associated with a group of people trying to work together including, for example: division of work, ownership, access control (e.g., read, write, edit), reconciliation of conflicting and/or simultaneous modifications, awareness of tasks (e.g., the current status of the document, access to recent modifications to the document), etc. Accordingly, there is a need to solve these and other problems associated with the prior art.